Ice In My Chest
by Another Writer Who Loves
Summary: Ever since John had come back from Vietnam, there was a coldness he couldn't shake no matter what.


Ever since John had come back from Vietnam, there was a coldness he couldn't shake no matter what.

It felt as if it had settled into his very bone marrow, finding its place inside of him and refusing to leave. No matter how high he turned his heater up or how many blankets or shirts or jackets he put on, he couldn't get rid of the chill.

Coming back home had been...more of an adventure than when he had left. In Vietnam things were relatively simple and in the end, had fallen into an almost monotonous pattern every day. Get up, train, be ready, march, train, obey, march, move, shoot if need to.

Home was the tough part. Returning back from the bombs echoing through the air, the vibrations of the gun that was no longer on his shoulder, the heavy weight of his pack.

But he had to leave it all behind when he came back to America. He'd left his pack and his gun and everything he did. He had buried his guilt and his sin in the dirt and rain filled fields behind him and tried to clean the blood off of his hands so that he could hug his mother when she had greeted him, teary eyed and grasping for him, in the airport.

Moving back to his old house, the house he had grown up in and no longer felt the same; he was different than when he had left, no longer that young boy that felt as if he could take on the entire world.

He had returned with shoulders slumped forward, eyes heavy with something he couldn't name, and an ice in his chest that wouldn't melt no matter what he did.

And he tried. At first he had tried to stay home, with his mom and he tried to reconnect with her, tried to be the boy she remembered, the boy that had gone off to war. Tried to smile and hold her hand and go to church with her, he tried to keep smiling until it felt as if his face was going to crack if he gave one more fake smile and...and…

And he couldn't do it. He would wake up in his too small confining bed in the middle of the night gasping for breath. One hand already on his mouth to prevent screaming, screaming would alert the enemy where they were after all.

He couldn't face her anymore. Couldn't take seeing the pained look in her face and the way she stared at him in worry. Couldn't take how she was trying to intertwine herself in his life again, poking and prodding at things he didn't want to touch again.

So. He left. He left, kissed his mom's cheek goodbye, packed a few meagre belongings, and left. He walked where he could, hitched a ride where he couldn't, and just kept going. Kept going until the money he had saved ran out and he stopped. Stopped in Lawrence, Kansas and at the first 'help wanted' sign he saw, hanging outside of a mechanic's shop, he slid in there and charmed his way into getting the job.

It wasn't that he didn't like the job; he liked being busy and he liked having something to focus on other than the cold and separation in his chest and mind, he didn't mind the job one bit. He worked from sunup to past sundown and did the same the next day. At the end of the week he would get paid and take his money straight to the bar a few blocks over. Sometimes he drank, a mouthful or two of whiskey or bourbon; whichever he felt that night in the hopes that the heat from the alcohol could help him come back to life. More often than not he'd put most of the money to the side, enough to cover rent for the one bedroom apartment he had found bills and groceries. The rest he'd use to gamble a bit. Try to double or sometimes triple his earnings.

Pool or cards or anything else, there was always a fight on the television or a race to watch or something that he could put his money on and either walk away with more or lose the entire pot.

And every night he would come back to his apartment, he couldn't always sleep, there were more nights he'd spend staring at the walls. Just watching the shadows move, trying to convince himself that they were just the shadows from the trees playing tricks on him and not the Viet soldiers coming to kill him.

And when the sun rose again and he didn't sleep a single moment in the night he'd get up and go to work, and do it all over again.

And if the bags under his eyes were growing; if he was getting thinner; his fingers twitching a bit too much and it becoming all the easier to get him angrier was apparent, no one said a word or seemed to care at all.

Sometimes John thought about leaving again, going from town to town again and trying to find someplace else, maybe just keep going over America until he had gotten away from the nightmares and the shadows and found a place of light and warmth. Maybe California or Texas would help, maybe he should just leave it all behind and keep walking, just keep walking until the ice inside of him melted or his legs gave out.

But he kept coming back. He continued to work from the sunup, to past sundown, went to the bar every Friday after being paid, and went home to not sleep and come back again.

Coming into work that morning was just like any other, there were cars to fix and things to do and equipment to work on. He gripped his wrench a bit tighter every time in an attempt to erase the imprints of the gun in his hand.

John sighed and shook his head, fiddling with the engine he was working on and not really in a hurry. The owner wasn't going to come back until tomorrow so he had plenty of time to make sure it was right and working.

"John!" his boss called out to him. "Want you to come over here and take a look at this one."

Giving a thumbs up to show he heard, John straightened up and took a moment to crack his back into place once more. He turned around and felt a warmth course through him as he stared. Not the car he was called to check out, but the person standing next to it.

For the first time he swore he could feel the ice melting in his chest and he could feel the warmth going through him, taking away the weight inside of him. Making him feel weightless and free, and more importantly, he could feel something unfurling inside of him that he hadn't felt in ages, hope.

"Hi." she said, her voice as light as bells, the sun in her hair, and a smile tugging at her lips. "I'm Mary Campbell."

**I do not own Supernatural. **

**211/365**

**I do take requests so if you have requests you can send them to me. **

**This was my story for the spnshortstories that was a thing a while back that I just realized I never posted.**


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